Category Archives: queer issues

Look, I’m an anarchist, and voting isn’t something I do any more. But sometimes, I look at the Green Party and think “they look like they might stand a chance and they’d probably be the least terrible. Maybe I’ll vote for them.” It was growing inside me, the knowledge that you, at least, might make things tolerable rather than terrible. All that’s gone now, because you’ve made yourselves look no different to the others.

So, he’s generally, up and down, pretty godawful and doesn’t embody Green Party ideals–as I understood the Party’s ideals, anyway. He did the old politicians’ apology and made the whole thing significantly worse. As I understand, an apology ought to include some distance from the unpleasant beliefs for which one is apologising, but Rupert Read’s… well, it really, really didn’t. Indeed, he restated a bunch of transmisogynistic ideology, adding that he wasn’t sure if trans women should be allowed to use women’s toilets. More broadly, he showed a devastating lack of understanding of how the world works these days, like a fucking dinosaur. He framed himself as a victim because of one or two four-letter words on Twitter. He moaned that it’s so hard to represent oneself on Twitter (which hardly fills one with confidence about his ability to represent his views in Parliament!). He made it clear–achingly clear–that he prefers debates to happen in the academy. The man is quite patently out of touch with the year 2015. I’d be a little embarrassed for him if he wasn’t such a thoroughly dreadful human.

I wondered why the Greens would select a candidate who is so at odds with the Party’s beliefs, and reeks of the kind of public school privilege of any other politician when a big part of your image is you’re different from the rest. He was the only candidate who put himself forward for the Cambridge seat, it’s true, but I know how political parties work, and I know if you didn’t want him, you would have dragged someone else up to stand against him. It’s pretty clear why you didn’t do that. He’s quite a big donor to the Green Party. He’s in the top 10 biggest donors to the party of all time. Last summer, he was the fourth biggest donor.

It might all be a coincidence, Green Party, but you can’t deny this looks very bad indeed. You’re running a candidate who not only holds absolutely terrible beliefs, but also gave you a lot of money. It looks a lot like he bought his selection. It looks a lot like the Green Party is no different from all of the others.

I like you, Green Party. Despite most of my instincts, I don’t want you to be destroyed by this. Rupert Read claims that most of the criticism is coming from people who want to see the Green Party burn, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of us who are angry are exactly the kind of people who would vote for you.

This is why I’m giving you some friendly advice: drop Rupert Read. Drop him like a burning turd. It’s Rupert Read himself who will harm you. He has to go. You need to take a strong stand against bigotry, and distance yourselves from him. I want you to do all right, and you can’t with a pompous transmisogynistic, sexist, racist conservative shitweasel like Rupert Read dragging you down.

Update 24/1/15: A second apology has now been issued. This one is significantly better, though only addresses the transmisogyny. Furthermore, Read and the Cambridge Green Party have refused to take donations from violent transmisogynistic hate group Gender Identity Watch and have condemned them [1] [2].

However, in light of the donations and the other awful stuff still left unaddressed, I still do not believe that it is appropriate for Rupert Read to stand.

This transcript was made by Abigail (@bradypodoid). It is posted here because Elaine (@scattermoon), one of the participants, asked me to host it. You can listen to the full broadcast here.

Content note: This transcript discusses transmisogyny and suicide

Presenter: Hello, I’m Deidre Finnerty. Welcome back. One of the stories you’ve been commenting on the most today is the death of Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender teenager who took her own life. Leelah was born a boy but identified as a girl, and before she died she left a post on her tumblr blog, which read “When I was 16 I realised that my parents would never come around and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any kind of transitioning treatment. This absolutely broke my heart.” Now Leelah’s death and her post have started a conversation about the challenges people face when growing up transgender. So today on this programme we’ve brought together a group of people who’ve had this experience. If you’ve got a question for them get in touch on facebook.com/worldhaveyoursay

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Well, we’re joined by guests in Michigan and in London, but first let’s bring in Raquel Willis in Georgia and Elaine in Reading in the UK. Welcome to the programme, both of you, and Raquel, let’s start with you. What was your response when you heard about this story?

Raquel: Hi. I definitely initially was kind of numb. Usually, I hear these stories – which happen a lot – there’s almost a new one every week – and usually I hear these stories, and it’s just kind of like, here’s another one of our girls – here’s another one of my sisters, here’s another person that could have been me. But as I sit there, and I start think about all of these deaths, you know, there’s a line there, Elaine knows, there are other trans women who have been murdered or have committed suicide, I just break down, I couldn’t help but be distraught. And the first thing I thought was that we need to get our voices out there. People have got to hear just how devastating it can be to be a transgender person in this world.

Presenter: Well, Raquel, I’m very keen for you to tell us about your own experience. What was it like for you when you were growing up?

Raquel: For me, it was very different. My family has always supported me, but of course my identity as far as a transgender little girl, I didn’t have the words for all of that – at that point I thought it was just a sexuality thing – people just called me gay, so I was just a little gay boy. But then as I got older I realised that people weren’t making fun of me because they thought I liked boys, at that point. They were making fun of me because of how I expressed myself, how my gender was. And my mom, she was very supportive of me, we had this, I guess, behind the closet conversation, just about these different things. She knew I liked make-up, she knew I liked these things that were deemed stereotypically feminine, and that society was already pressuring me to be a way that I really don’t think I was born to be. So, I was lucky on that front but I definitely received a lot of bullying from my peers – students always bullied me, particularly little boys.

Presenter: Now, Elaine, I want to put the same question to you that I put to Raquel. How did you feel when you heard about Leelah’s death?

Elaine: Hi. Yeah, my initial reaction was anger, to be honest. Not shock – it wasn’t shocking. This kind of news comes up all the time, literally every week, more and more people – many of whom, you know, don’t get to tell their stories – many of whom aren’t really mourned by people in the way that Leelah has been mourned this time. And I was just angry. I was angry that this was still going on, that we’re still losing so many on a daily basis, to this hatred – to these feelings of despair. People thinking they have no way out and not being listened to by their nearest and dearest – or supposedly nearest and dearest – who should be there to look out for them, but actually just won’t let them be who they are, when they need to be who they are.

Presenter: And is that a common feeling. You talk there about the hatred and your nearest and dearest not understanding you. Is that something you experienced yourself?

Elaine: Yeah. My parents weren’t abusive in any way, but when I, as a 14-year-old, pre-puberty – which is quite an important thing – well it felt like an important thing at the time – went to my parents and said “Hi, mum and dad, I’m trans”; they said “no, we don’t think that’s quite right. We think you’re wrong. You’re not like those people on the TV or on the front page of the tabloid newspapers. That’s not you, you must be mistaken, it must be a phase.” Um, “And God doesn’t make mistakes,” as well, something I was told, which I saw Leelah mentioned as well.

Presenter: And how do you cope with something like that?

Elaine: It’s a nightmare, really, because you just feel so incredibly trapped, you feel so incredibly isolated. It’s like being at the bottom of a well. You can see the light way above you, but you just have no way of getting there. And there’s nothing really to help you. Especially when you’re a teenager, as I was then, you don’t have the same legal rights you might as an adult. You have parental consent to do anything. So, if your parents aren’t on your side, then you are really stuck, because you need to do these things but you’re not being allowed to. And especially since puberty tends to kick in in the teens, you’ve got the feeling of your body changing against you, and you know it’s preventable, but you can’t stop it. It just feels like your entire life, your future life is going to be wrecked because of this.

Presenter: And Raquel, is this something that you identify with?

Raquel: Oh, definitely. I definitely resonate with the sentiment that you do feel so powerless. And that powerlessness kind of infiltrates your adulthood a lot of the time for trans individuals. You just felt like the world is against you, you know. You start out with your having maybe peers against you, or maybe your family against you and then it just kind of continues into healthcare, into education, and the workplace. I mean, there’s discrimination on all fronts for transgender individuals. And to battle with that kind of external relationship with the world, but also to battle with how internally with how you’re figuring and how you figure out you who are, and knowing that you will probably never get exactly to where you want to be, just given the fact that the resources aren’t always there. So there’s definitely this kind of disconnect from who you are as a person, to how society operates.

Presenter: It sounds like a very lonely place to be. Does it ever get any easier?

Raquel: I definitely think it can get easier. I think it doesn’t get easier for a lot of people, because after you’ve been drug through the trenches a lot of times it’s really hard to ride back up, so I don’t fault people who have committed suicide, people who have kind of isolated themselves, because the world can be very harsh. And it is lonely, on the dating scene it can be very difficult regardless of who you are attracted to. In terms of having family and community, I mean, even in the LGBTQ community there is a lot of ostracisation of transgender individuals, and when you think about cisgender people in the broader society, I mean, there’s so many blocks, that it’s really difficult to get through, to get to peace within yourself.

Presenter: And Elaine, did it ever get any easier for you? The support groups? Places where you could go for support and things you missed within your own friends and family circle?

Elaine: Not really. Not to begin with. I was quite isolated. I was growing up in Nottingham, which isn’t, you know, the end of the earth, but I didn’t know anyone else around. I didn’t have anyone else. All I really had was my online connections, a community on – well didn’t have tumblr – but back then it was livejournal where we all met up and discussed our thoughts, and it was really important because it gave us an avenue to actually speak about what was on our mind and what we were struggling with, with other people who had been in the same situation, and were in the same situation. And it felt a lot less isolating in that regard, because even if we didn’t have anyone to speak to in person, we still could log on to livejournal every night and speak with other people who were in the same place. But in person, no. And it’s still been largely the case, there isn’t as much support in society as there really should be. Especially once you get past your teens and early years, then a lot of support dries up, and lot of us have to form a kind of informal community where we all support each other, in lieu of that support. But really there should be more out there.

Presenter: Now I want to bring in Autumn Mahoney in Michigan and Katy Valentine in Leicester. Welcome to the programme, both of you. Now, I’m very keen to sit back and allow you all to share your own experiences, but let’s start with you, Autumn. What was your own experience of growing up transgender?

Autumn: Well, my experience was more of – I don’t think I really fell into the traditional narrative you hear, where you know what the situation is right from a very early age. I always understood that I felt different, and didn’t seem to fit in the same way people did, but I never had really much of a way to put a name or understand what those feelings meant until I got much older. It seems that nowadays with the Internet and so many resources out there, there are people that you can look at to see that, yes, this is a possibility, that yes, you can be transgender, that yes, you can make it through this, but when I was growing up, there was just absolutely no information out there. Pre-Internet days, and not knowing anyone in person, so, I really didn’t have any way, any context to put these feelings into. And so it wasn’t until much later in my life that I was able to kind of figure that out – and go through a transition, and become much happier as a result of that, but I wish the resources that had been available were there when I was growing up, it would have made things a whole lot easier.

Presenter: Katy is that something that you recognise?

Katy: Yes. I’m very similar, I am. I mean, I’m 25 years old, and I knew from a young age that I was different, but I didn’t know that becoming transgendered was a possibility, changing to the other gender. And it wasn’t until Big Brother’s Nadia, that I realised that there was a way I could become who I was. And growing up, it was really hard for me, considering even that I’m young, there still wasn’t much support out there for us.

Presenter: Here’s a post we’ve got from Facebook. It’s from Tara. And she says “being transgender I tried to hang myself at university and survived. At the time I felt it was my only escape and I couldn’t cope. We need to show transgender people they are valued no matter what challenges they face.” And she also says that “We should respond to Leelah’s death not with hate or vengeance against the parents or against the church.” So I wanted to put that to you, Katy, and also to you, Autumn. Do you agree with Tara? What’s the right response to a situation like this?

Katy: I would say yes. We shouldn’t treat it with hate at all. And there should be more support out there for transgender people. I mean, it was such a sad moment when we heard about Leelah and the suicide. It was so awful. But it should not be treated in a hateful veangeful way. It should be a way to celebrate Leelah’s life. Even though she did obviously take her own life. Which was horrendous. We should not be going aroudn blaming people, we should be able to help people.

Autumn: I see that it’s a very sad thing that we are able to see that there are people who would treat their children in the way that her parents did. And so much of that seems to be warped by these by these really conservative Christian beliefs. I don’t think think there needs to be an attack response to that, but it’s necessary to perhaps show alternatives to that type of behaviour and beliefs. You know, there are ways of being religious or being supportive that… I guess… It seems that that should not be something that gets in the way of love between parents and their children. It boggles my mind to even consider that.

Raquel: I would like to say, I think that there’s definitely a lot of hurt going on with the parents, and this happened even before Leelah committed suicide. People like to think that owning your transition and owning your identity is selfish, but the selfish thing is to go against people and devalue people because of that identity. And there’s a lot of hurt in a lot of parents when they have transgender children or queer children in general. And that’s something that we need to tackle, because we need to learn that this is not something that’s embarrassing. This is not something that devalues you as a parent. This is something that is going to help you prove just how great of a parent that you can be. If you can get over your child not being exactly the way you thought they might have been, then you win all the kudos from me.

Elaine: Absolutely. And as someone put it on twitter, it’s a bit harsh, but it’s also true, would you rather have a child who is queer or trans, or a child who is dead? And I think one problem with a lot of parents is that they get their idea of what being trans is from society as a whole, and a lot of ideas of being trans in society as a whole are so negative. They’re always the joke brought in on the sitcom, the side gag or the comments about, and I hate using this word “tranny” – every time you hear that word, it’s in such a negative context. And it also tends to be really highly sexualised, as well, you’ve got the whole category of “she-male” porn, for example. So, when a kid goes to their parents, and says, you know “mum, dad, or whoever, I’m trans”, and the parents will immediately think of this, and think “no, no, no, you know, you’re 12. you’re not this sort of sexualised parody figure on the front cover of the Sun or whatever, you know, I don’t want you to have that.” And they think, they think maybe if they talk their child out of it they can avoid that happening to their child. But that’s not the way to solve things, we need to fix society, we don’t need to change who people are, we need to change how they’re treated, because there’s nothing wrong with who they are.

Presenter: You’re listening to World Have Your Say on the BBC. Today on the programme we are discussing the case of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teenager who took her own life. And we’ve brought together a group of people to talk about their experiences of growing up transgender. Tara tweeted us to say “as a Catholic and a transgender woman, I believe God gave me the gift of being a woman as much as any woman”. We’ve also got another question coming in to us on twitter, @aimsetc, and she asks “What structural change is necessary? What services need to be provided” for transgender people.

Katy: We mainly need more support out there, especially for teenage people who believe they are transgendered women – or transgendered men – and that there should be more support, especially for teenage people, because they are the one who take their lives. They’re not the only ones, but they are the very few [sic].

Elaine: We need to look at housing, for young trans girls, young trans boys, non-binary kids, but also trans men, trans women, non-binary adults, as well. We need to have that support there, because there’s an awful lot of trans homeless people, for example. I mean, with the teens, if you tell your parents you are trans and they throw you out, where are you going to go? Who’s going to look after you? A lot of people end up on the streets. There are occasionally places who will house these trans kids, but only up until 18, and then where are they going to go?

Presenter: I want to introduce you to Tori in Leicester. Hello Tori, welcome to World Have Your Say.

Tori: Hello.

Presenter: Hello, Tori, I wanted to ask you how you felt when you heard about this case?

Tori: [silence]

Presenter: I think we may just have just lost the line to Tori in Leicester. But Juliet Jacques in on the line from London.

Juliet: Hi.

Presenter: Welcome to World Have Your Say, Juliet. And I want to put the same question to you that I put to all of our guests. What was your response when you heard about this case?

Juliet: Just this kind of heartsinking and heartbreaking feeling. It’s a familiar story for anyone has spent their life versed in sort of trans issues. Personal experience. Often there are feelings that I and a lot of people I know in the trans community could relate to. It’s familiar story in lots of ways. It’s very sad. I mean, like Elaine said, it wasn’t really shocking as such, and like Raquel said, I just kind of just felt a bit numb. You’re repeatedly hit with these sort of stories and after a while it just goes num, and that’s just the saddest feeling of all. And I’m sure for Leelah, I’m sure how she felt having her identity denied by her parents, compounded by the wider culture she lived in, being aware of other trans people in similar kind of positions, it just becomes kind of overwhelming really. Yeah, I mean it’s very sad news. I’m interested to see how widely shared social media. Lots of people who weren’t trans talking about it, and empathising. Which I hadn’t seen until the last couple of years, really. So I found that quite an interesting response. So, just like the rest of your guests really, just kind of quite sad and numb.

Presenter: And what about your own experience, Juliet?

Juliet: Well I grew up in a very small town – a village, really – in the early 90s – I’m 33 now – so I realised I was trans in 1992, and it was very difficult. Like some of your other guests, I didn’t have a language to describe what was going on. I just kept wearing women’s clothes, and having my gender regulated at school and at home. If I did anything that was considered kind of feminine I got laughed at by people around me, family members, or particularly by other classmates, by teachers even. And what really me save me was the advent of the internet, which came to be in the mid to late 90s. Again, even now you’d use twitter or tumblr, and I’d just used geocities sites really, which made it clear that there were other people leading liveable trans lives, who weren’t like the people who I’d seen in films or on telly, which cut through some of stereotypes that Elaine was talking about. And there were people I could feasibly actually meet, information about support services, or places to go. And that gave me a sense of community and a sense of being slightly less alone. My family – you know, I came out as transsexual when I was 27 – my were the last people I told, I was lucky enough at that point to live in Brighton and have a fairly supportive group of friends, to know some support networks. I was working for the NHS, who have infrastructures in place, quality and diversity managers, human resources people who I could sit down to and say how can we handle this. And it was only once I’d done all those things, and was privileged enough to have them all go as well as I could have hoped, that I was able to turn round to my parents and go, you know, this is who I am, and I got the same sort of response initially. “We don’t understand and that’s not what you’re like”. And it took quite a long time to get them to the point where my parents used the right pronouns and my name I’d chosen, and everything. But because I had everything else in place, I was able to take that sort of time. For somebody like Leelah, who sounds like she didn’t any kind of outlet at all, parental rejection was so overwhelming. You know, not everyone’s that lucky.

Autumn: I think that what you said about your family were the last ones you told, that’s kind of the same situation that I was in, I had come out to everybody at my church, friends and things, and working up the courage to talk to my parents about it, even though I was 35 years old, all grown up, and had no indications that they were going to have any trouble with it, it was still the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. And to look at Leelah’s situation, where she knows she’s not supported, and is entirely dependent on them as parents, and just realise how horrible and difficult that had to have been. You can understand what would drive somebody to suicide. It’s so hard to look and see that happens to so many people. I think that this is kind of why I was really excited to see this twitter trend growing here. Seeing so many visible examples of positive trans lives. There is, as hard as it can be when you’re growing up, there’s so much potential out there. And I hope that this reaches even just one person growing up, that gives them some hope for possibility going forward.

Elaine: Yeah. If you’re listening to this and you’re trans, and you know, you may be in the same boat as Leelah, you know. I was there. I was there in my teens. I have puberty went through my body when I really didn’t wish to have it. It was horrible. It was an absolute nightmare. I made it through. Puberty doesn’t have to be the end all. You can transition at 18. You can transition at 50. You can transition at 36. You can transition at 80. You just need to transition if you know you need to transition. And it’s all valid. And you can still be beautiful. You know, there isn’t the time limit you think there is. And if you a parent and you’re listening to this, then please just let your kids know that even if you don’t think they’re trans, that would be OK for them, and that’s valid. And everyone else, ask yourselves what are you going to do to change this?

Presenter: I’m very very sorry to cut in there Elaine.

Elaine: I’m done, thanks.

Presenter: But this music coming up means we’re right up against of the programme. And thanks very much to all our guests for this fascinating discussion. World Have Your Say will be back with you tomorrow, at 18 GMT with Chloe Tilley

Content warning: This post mentions and links to content discussing transmisogyny and suicide

You will have likely heard of the tragic death of Leelah Alcorn and perhaps seen her suicide note and the reaction of the mother whose behaviour directly caused Leelah’s death. As a cis person, I have little to add personally, but my own sadness that this happens not just to Leelah but to countless other people in her situation. All I can offer is a round-up of the words of others who understand the situation better than me, because they have lived it. I also want to signpost that tomorrow, 3rd January, there will be a vigil for Leelah at Trafalgar Square at 1pm if you wish to come and pay respects.

Sapphophobia is when bi women are seen as indecisive, because all women are seen to lack a strong mind. Sapphophobia is when bi women are seen as deceptive, because all women are seen as liars. Sapphophobia is when bi women are seen as making it up for attention, because all women are seen as attention-seeking minxes. Sapphophobia is where bi women are seen as greedy, because all women are seen to be out for all they can get. Sapphophobia is when bi women are seen as sluts, because all women in control of their sexuality are seen as pathological.

It’s impossible to separate sapphophobia from misogyny, just as it is impossible to separate it from broader biphobia. It’s telling that it’s usually men who repeat this trope, although as I painfully learned last year, women can do it too and that’s rooted in internalised misogyny as well as a heterosexual hatred of queer women.

So today, I send love to my bi sisters, my pansexual sisters, my queer sisters. You are beautiful, and fuck the world. Literally, if that’s what you want.

So, there seems to be a lot of wilful misunderstanding about what the word “cis” means, with a complete lack of will to listen to what trans women are saying, so I figured now is the time for me to come out as cis.

When I’m downing pints in the pub, watching the football and making whoooargh football noises, I’m a cis woman.

When I’m climbing trees and skinning knees, I’m a cis woman.

When I’m wearing a gigantic strap-on dildo and feeling the thing like a phantom limb, I’m a cis woman.

When I’m shoving the boys aside to explain to them how badly they’ve fucked up the barbecue and how to do it right, I’m a cis woman.

When I’m wiping out space armies on the tabletop or computer screen, guess what, I’m a fucking cis woman.

But wait! Those who deliberately refuse to understand the word “cis” cry. Surely I cannot be cis if I do these things, because I’m subverting gender roles.

Nope.

See, when I was born, the doctors looked at my junk and went, “it’s a girl”. I grew up a cis girl, and I blossomed into a cis woman. I have never in my life been a trans woman, or a trans man. I have never experienced transphobia or transmisogyny. I have never transitioned. I’m also not non-binary.

Today is National Orgasm Day, so of course I took this opportunity to TMI at you people, because TMI is my middle name. I’ve been having orgasms for more than half my life, and here are a few things I learned along the way.

1. I am my own best lover

Look, it’s nice having other people around. It enhances sex a lot. But I’ve been fucking myself for about 15 years, and so I think I’m best positioned for knowing exactly what works best. Only I know the full details, despite the fact that people over the years (usually, but not exclusively men) have taken it upon themselves to give me some sort of Entirely New Experience because they Know Best and pretty much every time that’s happened it’s ended in mutual disappointment. Even now, when I have two partners and a host of less regular lovers, I still make time for a date with myself. Nobody’s quite as good as me at making me come.

2. Having the same genitals as me doesn’t automatically make you better at sex

There’s a common myth flying round that cis lesbians are automatically better at sex with cis women, because they have the same equipment. That is categorically untrue. Having a cunt does not grant you a PhD in Cuntology. Everyone likes different things, and sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of egocentrism. I’ve been on both the giving and receiving end of the assumption that having a fanny means knowing how every fanny works. Communication is key, rather than anatomy.

3. Squirting doesn’t mean you’ve wanked yourself incontinent

I was about fifteen, and having the sort of epic wanking session one tends to lose the stamina for once one is out of one’s teens. I brought myself to shuddering orgasm after shuddering orgasm, and then one felt… different. There was wet stuff everywhere. I panicked slightly. I sprayed Febreeze all over the wet patch. I was convinced I had managed to come so hard I’d peed myself, and I laid off the masturbatory marathons for a while after to make sure I didn’t develop some sort of bladder problem. I was quiet about this horrifying thing that had happened to me, the gross piss-pariah. Oddly enough, I only learned this was a perfectly ordinary thing to happen a few years later, while watching porn. Yep. Porn saved me.

4. Porn gives people hella weird assumptions about squirting

So, I squirt. This is apparently a little uncommon, although pretty popular in porn. The thing is, in porn, this seems to happen on demand (I imagine, in fact, it requires multiple takes and a whole bunch of fluffing and it’s probably a little easier to happen knowing nobody’s going to have to sleep in the expansive wet patch). This is pretty much not how it happens for me. There is no magical formula for ensuring ejaculation occurs. It just sometimes does. Or, more frequently, doesn’t. The thing is, once it’s happened once, there’s usually this assumption that it’ll happen reliably, which leads to crushing disappointment, because it’s not like in the movies. Going off like a geyser is something which is fetishised, and I can’t live up to it. Luckily, most people will get this once it’s been explained to them.

5. My orgasms make men sad

Once upon a time, I used to fuck cis, straight men. I gave up on this, because politically they’re rubbish, and I have successfully arranged my life so I just don’t even meet them any more. As an additional fact about me, I have super-powerful Kegels. This is always brilliantly fun for me, but not so much for the cis, straight men who think penis-in-vagina is the be-all and end-all to sex. You see, my Kegels can easily eject a penis at the moment of my orgasm. And after that, I’m usually kind of done, and might roll over, fart and fall asleep. This makes cis, straight men sad, because sex is traditionally centred around their orgasms: they’re the ones who get to roll over, fart and fall asleep. For some reason, when the roles are reversed, it makes them feel sad.

6. Orgasms really aren’t the be-all and end-all

I’ve had phenomenal sex without an orgasm. There’s something incredibly nice about focusing yourself on someone else having a good time. I can have spectacular sex without the need for the other person to even touch me. For the most part, sex is a pleasant way of passing the time between two or more people, and an orgasm isn’t a requirement for that to be fun. They’re like the marzipan on top of an otherwise-delicious cake: it’s awesome if it’s there, but it’s not necessary at all. And if you want it, later you can get a whole block of marzipan and eat it to yourself.

Last night, I went to the pub with my friends Roz and Sarah. Roz and Sarah are trans women, so piss TERfs off by just existing and being really awesome with it. Meanwhile, you all know about me–to TERfs, I’m the traitor for sororitising with the enemy.

We were followed to the pub. Our whereabouts was spread about TERf circles by text message, and they were rumbled when one of their lot tweeted, bragging about this information exchange. It was fortunate that our whereabouts were only made public after we’d already left and started our journey home, because otherwise, this could have become very dangerous indeed. As a woman, a vocal, outspoken woman, I have pissed a lot of men off in my time, too. These men literally want me dead. I know this, they’ve said it often enough. I don’t really want these men knowing where I am when I’m in a small group and vulnerable, because there is a genuine sense of danger here. I don’t doubt the same is true for my friends.

I also don’t doubt the TERfs know that this is true. We know for a fact that these people want trans women dead. They doxx and stalk and harass, trying to be the ones who give the order rather than the ones who pull the trigger. They try to block access to vital medical care, knowing this might kill people.

Now, I know that I’m not necessarily a safe person for trans women to be around. I have a high profile and a shitload of enemies. I sometimes worry that by talking to me, these women could be put in danger, draw unnecessary and unwanted attention. I thought I was being careful enough, but maybe I wasn’t. Me and my friends discussed meeting up that day via Twitter, and this is probably how our stalkers ended up tracking us down and tweeting out our location. I noticed that one of the stalkers followed me on Twitter–I can’t tell who’s following me there, and who isn’t. I cannot believe that this is something I even need to think about, but this is the climate in which we work, and I don’t blame any marginalised woman for staying the fuck away from me because of something like this.

But ultimately, the fault here isn’t mine. There’s things I can do to tighten security, and I’ll do those things. The real problem here is TERfs. This is not feminism, it’s being a fucking creep. These people are a danger. This is why I have a hair trigger on my block button for them and anyone who pals around with them: it’s proved it to me. You never know when one could be passing on information.

I write this post as a reminder: a reminder that this isn’t some sort of intellectual parlour game. The safety of women is at stake here. I’m fine and I’m alive, but what I want to come from this is an increased level of awareness. I want this post to be read. I want people to know that the TERfs literally stalk women. And I know that me being cis means more people are likely to care.

Isn’t that just the most fucked-up thing?

Edit, about 2 hours after posting: It looks like TERfs are trying to distance themselves from this because they realised how bad it looks. They have decided to throw the woman who tweeted our details under the bus and claim she is a man. However, they are continuing to laugh at the idea, and crack jokes with the woman. Unsurprisingly, they’re also continuing to harass me online. TERfs are perpetrating. TERfs are complicit. TERfs are loving this. TERfs are responsible. And, to boot, they’re failing on basic principles of #ibelieveher. I don’t have the energy to document it. If anyone wants to, they’re welcome to, but I don’t expect this. I know my readers tend to believe survivors.